1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a packet retransmission method and related electronic device, and more particularly, to a packet retransmission method and related electronic device that updates data carried in a packet for retransmission to enhance data transmission efficiency.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In a packet-switched network, regardless of wired or wireless transmission medium, packet data is liable to be damaged, missed or duplicated due to cable qualities or environmental interferences during transmission. Thus, a variety of error detection and correction technologies has been developed to control packet transmission errors for increasing reliability of packet transmission.
Generally, the error correction technologies can be substantially divided into two types: Retransmission and Forward Error Correction (FEC). The FEC is accomplished by adding redundancy, also known as Error-Correcting Codes (ECC), to transmitted data using a predetermined algorithm. This allows receivers to detect and correct errors (within some bound) of the data being received. Thus, retransmission of the data can often be avoided. However, the drawback of the FEC is that redundant data has to be transmitted.
Compared to the FEC, the retransmission technology is accomplished by resending packets which are either damaged or lost to make sure all transmitted information can be received correctly, in which an Acknowledgment Repeat request (ARQ) mechanism is usually used to repeatedly resend the packets until Acknowledgement (ACK) messages corresponding to each of the packets are received.
However, when packet retransmission is performed, packet overheads, such as packet headers, error checking redundant and synchronization codes, are also retransmitted, so as to cause waste of limited channel resources. Additionally, the packet retransmission also increases data transmission delay, and is unfavorable for use in timing critical applications.